John Dvorak is wrong again — this time about “death” of FrontPage

The thing that really killed FrontPage? Microsoft’s marketing team tested the name on a range of developers and Web designers/builders. They all derided it. The marketers learned there was no way they were going to be able to continue with the FrontPage brand. So they killed the brand.

Does the code live on? Yes. Sorta.

The Microsoft Expression Web product is really a continuation of FrontPage. But it’s been totally rebuilt. Why? Cause FrontPage had a reputation for changing code, for not respecting standards, and for forcing its own style on the development team. Those problems are all gone now.

Anyway, it’s time to go get dressed for Chris and Ponzi’s wedding. I hear their vows will appear on Chris’ blog at about the same time that he and Ponzi are saying them to each other.

I’m not going to blog, but Jake Ludington and I were thinking about how we could stream video. We won’t know if that’s possible until we get to the place and see if there’s any good Wifi. Either way, you’ll get a report later.

UPDATE: there’s more over on Digg. The comments there are a good example of why I don’t get much value from Digg. Too much noise and very little knowledge.

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Published by Robert Scoble

Chief Strategy Officer at Infinite Retina. https://infiniteretina.com
The Spatial Computing (AR/VR/AI) Agency that helps entrepreneurs with their AR/VR projects and companies.
View all posts by Robert Scoble

Larry has it right on the mark. As FrontPage evolved more in to a SharePoint focused tool, and they reworte the code base to be common with Visual Studio that is really where FrontPage lives today. It is amazing though how sometimes tech writers can so so off base, or maybe just fishing for something to write about. The new Expression is really it’s own animal as well (along with Expression Design and Expression Web). These three are clearly targeted at the Adobe/Macromedia web stack which are tremendous products with a huge following. Given that many independent web designers used FrontPage, now SharePoint Designer, it would seem they are stressing Expression Web as its FrontPage’s follow-on as the products that fills that gap. Mostly semantics but I am glad to see Microsoft really creating some good product finally in this space as competion on the web design front will only be good for everyone, nost especially content consumers.
Michael

Larry has it right on the mark. As FrontPage evolved more in to a SharePoint focused tool, and they reworte the code base to be common with Visual Studio that is really where FrontPage lives today. It is amazing though how sometimes tech writers can so so off base, or maybe just fishing for something to write about. The new Expression is really it’s own animal as well (along with Expression Design and Expression Web). These three are clearly targeted at the Adobe/Macromedia web stack which are tremendous products with a huge following. Given that many independent web designers used FrontPage, now SharePoint Designer, it would seem they are stressing Expression Web as its FrontPage’s follow-on as the products that fills that gap. Mostly semantics but I am glad to see Microsoft really creating some good product finally in this space as competion on the web design front will only be good for everyone, nost especially content consumers.
Michael

Outside of Windows, Expression’s doing nothing. Oh yes, I know, it creates cross platform code. Well, by Microsoft’s definition. Of course, Microsoft can’t even create cross-platform code in house, for its own divisions. So pardon my skepticism on Microsoft’s new “interop” religion. But then, the results of the Sun dog and pony show, and Ballmer threatening to sue Linux users because “all Linux is stealing Microsoft IP” might have something to do with that. And the continued vapor status of WPF/E.

Outside of Windows, Expression’s doing nothing. Oh yes, I know, it creates cross platform code. Well, by Microsoft’s definition. Of course, Microsoft can’t even create cross-platform code in house, for its own divisions. So pardon my skepticism on Microsoft’s new “interop” religion. But then, the results of the Sun dog and pony show, and Ballmer threatening to sue Linux users because “all Linux is stealing Microsoft IP” might have something to do with that. And the continued vapor status of WPF/E.

Not get any value from Digg? Haha, every honest person who’s ever used Digg has to agree with that. What a joke it is. The ONLY value it’s ever brought to the web was as a nerdish news aggregator. I used to visit several times a day just to see what was interesting. Now with each passing day there’s more garbage content, stupid videos, etc. that reduce its worth and use to me evermore. Last week Digg left my favorites, now I type in the url on the rare bored occassion. Soon I won’t even bother with that.

Frontpage? Man, that thing needed bigtime help. The only thing that produced worse html was the Office suite of programs. I hope the Expression team has turned it around.

Not get any value from Digg? Haha, every honest person who’s ever used Digg has to agree with that. What a joke it is. The ONLY value it’s ever brought to the web was as a nerdish news aggregator. I used to visit several times a day just to see what was interesting. Now with each passing day there’s more garbage content, stupid videos, etc. that reduce its worth and use to me evermore. Last week Digg left my favorites, now I type in the url on the rare bored occassion. Soon I won’t even bother with that.

Frontpage? Man, that thing needed bigtime help. The only thing that produced worse html was the Office suite of programs. I hope the Expression team has turned it around.

Well, technically, if you follow the link, it’s the Inquirer, not Dvorak, who’s wrong. A lot of their assertions seem to stem from the assumption that Frontpage was targeted towards ordinary users, whereas Sharepoint Designer and Expression Web are for professionals. While that was certainly true for early versions of Frontpage, my understanding is that the last few revs were focused on professionals.

Well, technically, if you follow the link, it’s the Inquirer, not Dvorak, who’s wrong. A lot of their assertions seem to stem from the assumption that Frontpage was targeted towards ordinary users, whereas Sharepoint Designer and Expression Web are for professionals. While that was certainly true for early versions of Frontpage, my understanding is that the last few revs were focused on professionals.

For the sake of your ego and self-esteem, don’t even start on the journey you’re thinking of. You’ve not the tech chops to do this, so stop, or I’ll treat you like Sven On Crack..er Tech.

Running Expression on a Mac in a Windows VM is not the same thing as Expression being a cross-platform dev application. I know that you come from the online school of journalism that says “Accuracy and correctness are unimportant compared with Google and Meme rankings”, but that still does not mean everything is exactly the same.

Parallels is a fantastic product, but it’s not convenient. It costs eighty bucks as a product, then you’re paying a hundred or more for a copy of XP, or more for a copy of Vista that you’re allowed to run in a VM, then whatever costs are associated with Expressions, if any.

That’s not a cross platform environment. It’s still windows. Even if you run it in Crossover Mac, it’s still a Windows application. It offers no, none, zero integration with Mac OS X. It works differently than Mac OS X applications. A cross platform web dev environment is something like GoLive, Dreamweaver, or Emacs if you will.

I know that regardless of where you work, you’ll never stop being a Microsoft cheerleader, but if you’re trying to tell me that Microsoft has the interop religion, then you better show me real products and real work, not some lamer techfanboy bullshit about “It runs in parallels, so it’s cross platform”. Please. That might work with your crowd, but you try that in mine, and you’re going to get laughed up into Oregon.

For the sake of your ego and self-esteem, don’t even start on the journey you’re thinking of. You’ve not the tech chops to do this, so stop, or I’ll treat you like Sven On Crack..er Tech.

Running Expression on a Mac in a Windows VM is not the same thing as Expression being a cross-platform dev application. I know that you come from the online school of journalism that says “Accuracy and correctness are unimportant compared with Google and Meme rankings”, but that still does not mean everything is exactly the same.

Parallels is a fantastic product, but it’s not convenient. It costs eighty bucks as a product, then you’re paying a hundred or more for a copy of XP, or more for a copy of Vista that you’re allowed to run in a VM, then whatever costs are associated with Expressions, if any.

That’s not a cross platform environment. It’s still windows. Even if you run it in Crossover Mac, it’s still a Windows application. It offers no, none, zero integration with Mac OS X. It works differently than Mac OS X applications. A cross platform web dev environment is something like GoLive, Dreamweaver, or Emacs if you will.

I know that regardless of where you work, you’ll never stop being a Microsoft cheerleader, but if you’re trying to tell me that Microsoft has the interop religion, then you better show me real products and real work, not some lamer techfanboy bullshit about “It runs in parallels, so it’s cross platform”. Please. That might work with your crowd, but you try that in mine, and you’re going to get laughed up into Oregon.

You seem to equivocating interopability and portablity. So we’re on the same page, my understanding is that interoperability means a means a product is able to accept input and create output that other products can understand and work with. Portability, on the other hand, means simply the a single product is able to run on more than one platform (usually meaning operating systems or CPU architectures).

Expression Web isn’t portable, but it makes great strides in interop by leading designers to build more standards-based solutions.

You seem to equivocating interopability and portablity. So we’re on the same page, my understanding is that interoperability means a means a product is able to accept input and create output that other products can understand and work with. Portability, on the other hand, means simply the a single product is able to run on more than one platform (usually meaning operating systems or CPU architectures).

Expression Web isn’t portable, but it makes great strides in interop by leading designers to build more standards-based solutions.

I agree with Guy. There’s no value in reading the Digg comments. I just use it as a place where I jump-off to get to the core of the post. Not the inane comments in Digg itself. Same goes with Slashdot.

I agree with Guy. There’s no value in reading the Digg comments. I just use it as a place where I jump-off to get to the core of the post. Not the inane comments in Digg itself. Same goes with Slashdot.

The part I was not able to catch, is what hosting platforms will handle this. Does the use of the standards imply that those nice cheap hosting solutions like godaddy who support frontpage extensions and the like will support this type of site or are we talking only ASP.net hosters?

The part I was not able to catch, is what hosting platforms will handle this. Does the use of the standards imply that those nice cheap hosting solutions like godaddy who support frontpage extensions and the like will support this type of site or are we talking only ASP.net hosters?

Expression Web isn’t portable, but it makes great strides in interop by leading designers to build more standards-based solutions.

Right. Microsoft pushing solutions that don’t bind you to windows. Again Bryan, when I see it happening on a regular basis, consistently across the board. Not just one division, but ALL OF THEM, I’ll buy it. Don’t forget, I’ve heard Microsoft play this song before, and I know how it ended.

Hmm…you can only design WPF/E content on WIndows. That’s handy. Not really, but Microsoft said this when they first announced it. No suprises there.

The CTP release will support Windows Media Audio and Video 9 (WMV and WMA) and popular profiles of the SMPTE-standard VC-1 codec. When we release the final version, MP3 audio will also be supported. Additional formats will be available at final release based on customer feedback.

How handy, they’ll “let” it support MP3 too. Gee, how…open.

Will “WPF/E” support DRM? What about on devices?

Microsoft will support content protection as an option set by content providers and is actively investigating customer requirements for rights management for a variety of scenarios.

Wanna bet it won’t support anything that WiMP on the Mac didn’t support?

I also see that Microsoft is really loving their new, even stupider license:

“You may not
• disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval;
• work around any technical limitations in the software;”

Can SOMEONE explain to me what the HELL “you may not work around technical limitations in the software” means?

Why does a PLUGIN that goes in a directory that I have full access to require a root login. Wait, Microsoft, no clue, never mind.

It doesn’t work in Firefox 2.0:

“You must be running Firefox 1.5.0.8 to view “WPF/E” content on this page. Visit the “WPF/E” product site for more details.”

Good job there. Way to go.

But then, there were betas of Active X Mac. It’s a nice start, and honestly, more than I expected from the WIndows team. But it isn’t done yet. As well, you have to use Windows to develop this?

Expression Web isn’t portable, but it makes great strides in interop by leading designers to build more standards-based solutions.

Right. Microsoft pushing solutions that don’t bind you to windows. Again Bryan, when I see it happening on a regular basis, consistently across the board. Not just one division, but ALL OF THEM, I’ll buy it. Don’t forget, I’ve heard Microsoft play this song before, and I know how it ended.

Hmm…you can only design WPF/E content on WIndows. That’s handy. Not really, but Microsoft said this when they first announced it. No suprises there.

The CTP release will support Windows Media Audio and Video 9 (WMV and WMA) and popular profiles of the SMPTE-standard VC-1 codec. When we release the final version, MP3 audio will also be supported. Additional formats will be available at final release based on customer feedback.

How handy, they’ll “let” it support MP3 too. Gee, how…open.

Will “WPF/E” support DRM? What about on devices?

Microsoft will support content protection as an option set by content providers and is actively investigating customer requirements for rights management for a variety of scenarios.

Wanna bet it won’t support anything that WiMP on the Mac didn’t support?

I also see that Microsoft is really loving their new, even stupider license:

“You may not
• disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval;
• work around any technical limitations in the software;”

Can SOMEONE explain to me what the HELL “you may not work around technical limitations in the software” means?

Why does a PLUGIN that goes in a directory that I have full access to require a root login. Wait, Microsoft, no clue, never mind.

It doesn’t work in Firefox 2.0:

“You must be running Firefox 1.5.0.8 to view “WPF/E” content on this page. Visit the “WPF/E” product site for more details.”

Good job there. Way to go.

But then, there were betas of Active X Mac. It’s a nice start, and honestly, more than I expected from the WIndows team. But it isn’t done yet. As well, you have to use Windows to develop this?

While Microsoft’s marketing may have fired the fatal bullet, the market for personal GeoCities Frontpagey type of sites, did indeed run dry, but it’s not all blogging, MySpace Facebooky-like morphs, played their part too…but it’s all just a natural commodity-market progression. Well, add in the usual Microsoft twiddling and marketing trainwrecks, but in a way, it’s even beyond that, as a simple end of lifecycle; no tears are shed regardless. 😉

While Microsoft’s marketing may have fired the fatal bullet, the market for personal GeoCities Frontpagey type of sites, did indeed run dry, but it’s not all blogging, MySpace Facebooky-like morphs, played their part too…but it’s all just a natural commodity-market progression. Well, add in the usual Microsoft twiddling and marketing trainwrecks, but in a way, it’s even beyond that, as a simple end of lifecycle; no tears are shed regardless. 😉

Well Front Page is verry good Web Design Tool but I stop to use him 2 years ago and decide to use Dreamweaver. I think that Microsoft decide to finish with front page and send him in pension because they see and understand that Dreamweaver is much more better and spread that FP. If they want to success in this part of software they need to build something new!

Well Front Page is verry good Web Design Tool but I stop to use him 2 years ago and decide to use Dreamweaver. I think that Microsoft decide to finish with front page and send him in pension because they see and understand that Dreamweaver is much more better and spread that FP. If they want to success in this part of software they need to build something new!

I was a bit of a skeptic when I first heard FrontPage was being phased out…until I took a closer look at what was replacing it. Now I know why…and I've see Dreamweaver users take note of the improvements in Web Design thanks to Microsoft and their ingenious ways! Some have called Expression Web and subsequent upgrades as a more affordable version of Dreamweaver CS3/CS4. I'm happy to be able to stick with Microsoft Products such as Expression Web and this is a huge step for them to have made this overhaul – for which I am grateful!

I was a bit of a skeptic when I first heard FrontPage was being phased out…until I took a closer look at what was replacing it. Now I know why…and I've see Dreamweaver users take note of the improvements in Web Design thanks to Microsoft and their ingenious ways! Some have called Expression Web and subsequent upgrades as a more affordable version of Dreamweaver CS3/CS4. I'm happy to be able to stick with Microsoft Products such as Expression Web and this is a huge step for them to have made this overhaul – for which I am grateful!